League of Legends: Guide to bottom lane

Duo Lane:

Everyone is bound to be in bottom lane at some time or another. Many people prefer to play solo lanes (mid and top) but the much more complicated features of bottom lane can be a lot of fun.

Starting off, for those of you new to this, bottom lane is always the 2v2 lane. In many normal games, you do not have a jungler, therefore both top and bottom are 2v2. However, if your team does have a jungler, always put 2 people at bottom.

Responsibilities: Dragon, Mid, Jungle

The players are bottom lane have 1 very basic responsibility, and a few others that can only make the game better for you. Bottom lane must always keep an eye on dragon. Buy a ward for dragon!(a pink one if you plan to kill dragon at some point) It will warn you when someone is coming to gank, and tell your team when their team is going for dragon. This is essential! Dragon is worth 975 gold!(190 per player + 25 for killing it) That is very critical.

Furthermore, bottom can gank the enemies jungle. This can be achieved by proper timing, or better, by simply warding it. For teams on the bottom left side, this means warding the enemy blue buff. For top right, warding the enemy red buff. Shutting down a jungler can mean safe laning for your entire team for an extra bit of time. Jungling is often done on a fine line and a slight interruption can really set it back.

Bottom lane can also gank mid. Pulling off a kill in mid is great for the team, but even if it doesn't, you can get mid to waste some of their summoner spells or do some damage to them. If they are forced to heal, they lose out on gold and experience. If they stay but are more damaged, your team gains lane dominance. Lane dominance means free farming and a possible kill in the future. Possibly even denying experience.

General Laning:

In general, laning at its best involves denying the opponent minion kills and experience without losing too much of it yourself. This is easier to accomplish in bottom lane as one player can harass while the other farms. They can even take turns depending on the type of champion. Champions like zilean may not be great at last hitting minions, but can harass enemy champions with bombs very easily, and at quite a good range. Making it easy for a zilean to push enemy champions back, out of range of minion kills, and possible out of range of experience. Also, just because you are winning your lane does not mean you should push! If you push, you canny deny, and will never have the chance to kill the enemy champions as they will simply turret hug. However, if they are low on mana and champions that are bad at farming, you could push in order to damage and hopefully kill their turret. Try only to do that in appropriate situations though.

Another quick tip, use the bushes to your advantage! If your abilities are on cool down and they have a ranged attack damage champion coming after you, hop in a bush so they can't hit you. This is particularly useful if you are able to move back behind your minions so the minions will chase them and do damage to them. Always use minions and bushes to your advantage!

Carry & Support:

Putting a carry and a support at bottom lane is incredibly popular. A support like taric, soraka, janna, or sona simply supports a carry, normally a ranged carry like ashe or cait. The carry gets all the minion kills and therefore all the gold, allowing them to be really good. The support keeps them healed or otherwise safe and allows them to free farm. The support can occasionally move to mid to gank or the enemy's jungle to gank, allowing the carry to gain some extra experience. The general idea is that a support really doesn't need too much gold but a farmed carry is amazing for the team. A strong ranged carry can also fairly easily take a 2v1 at bottom if the support goes elsewhere.